Data storage is a critical component for computing. In a computing device, there is a storage area in the system to store data for access by the operating system and applications. In a distributed environment, additional data storage may be a separate device that the computing device has access to for regular operations. These data storages are generally referred to storage systems.
In a storage system, a file system namespace indicates the way files and directories are identified and organized in the storage system. The file system namespace may take any of a variety of different forms. In one embodiment it contains file names, directory names, and the attributes and hierarchy of the files and directories.
When files and directories are added and deleted from the storage system, the file system namespace will be updated. The update causes information in the namespace not evenly distributed, and continuous update makes the namespace being stored inefficiently and wasting storage space.